Meet Emission Requirements Research Articles

Further Development of Gasoline from the bioliq® Process with Focus on Particulate and Hydrocarbon Emissions

The production of CO2-neutral fuels is a key technology to achieve the European Union’s targets of greenhouse gas reduction in the transport sector. For a straightforward application such as drop-in fuel, regenerative gasoline must meet emission requirements without causing significant changes in engine parameters. The objective of this work was to demonstrate the emission reduction potential of fuel from the bioliq® plant by reducing the content of heavy aromatics in the product refinement. For three blends with varying contents of bioliq® fuel, the spray behavior was studied in a pressurized chamber and the particulate and hydrocarbon emissions were investigated using a single-cylinder research engine. With increasing bioliq® fuel content, atomization was degraded by lower flash boiling at low pressure. This effect vanished at higher chamber pressures. Measurements of particulate and hydrocarbon emissions showed significant improvements of 50% to 100% and 10%, respectively, compared to previously investigated bioliq® fuel fractions from 2017. The formation of particulate emissions is virtually unaffected by the blending of bioliq® fuel, due to the absence of heavy aromatics in the refined bioliq® product. Hydrocarbon emissions increased by 20% with higher bioliq® fuel content and late injection timings due to inferior mixture formation as a result of slightly reduced atomization. However, near the optimum injection timing, the hydrocarbon emissions are independent of the bioliq® fuel admixture.

Effects of swirl and hot streak on thermal performances of a high-pressure turbine

Advanced civil aero-engines tend to adopt lean burn combustors to meet emission requirements. The exit of a lean burn combustor experiences highly non-uniformities in both temperature (Hot Streak, HS) and flow (swirl). This paper presents a numerical investigation on the behaviors of a High-Pressure (HP) turbine under a combined effect of swirl and hot streak. The investigation was conducted on a GE-E3 HP turbine with unsteady numerical simulations, which considered the realistic clocking position of the HP Nozzle Guide Vane (NGV) relative to the combustor. The influences of swirl orientations on the HS migration and thermal performances on the blade surface were examined. Results indicate that, inside the NGV passage, the swirl’s induced incidence angle effect dominates the HS radial migration. The transversal movement of HS follows the cross flow and thus makes itself approach the Suction Side (SS) and keep away from the Pressure Side (PS) as passing through the NGV, so that HS near the SS is more influenced by the incidence angle effect than that near the PS. As for the heat transfer, swirl affects the Heat Transfer Coefficient (HTC) on the NGV’s PS and SS mainly through the incidence angle effect. Different from the NGV, the inlet swirl and HS have limited effect on the HTC on the rotor blade’s PS, while on the rotor blade’s SS, the original vortex system dominates; therefore, the inlet non-uniformities merely enhance the HTC on the SS rather than alter its distribution characteristics.

Impacts of different exhaust thermal management methods on diesel engine and SCR performance at different altitude levels

Exhaust thermal management is important for efficient operation of the diesel engine aftertreatment system to meet emissions requirements at low speed and low load conditions. In order to study the impacts of exhaust thermal management strategies on diesel engine performance and SCR conversion efficiency at different altitudes, the effects of the altitudes (2000, 1000, and 0 m), intake throttling, exhaust throttling, and post injection were experimentally studied with a high-pressure common-rail diesel engine that consisted of a diesel oxidation catalyst (DOC) and a selective catalytic reduction (SCR) aftertreatment device. The results showed that the exhaust temperature and the SCR conversion efficiency were improved by intake or exhaust throttling or post injection at any altitudes. However, the intake or exhaust throttling resulted in engine air flow rate reduction, combustion deterioration, brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC) increase, and NOx emissions decrease. When the intake throttling and the exhaust throttling were compared with the same pressure change amplitude, the intake throttling provided better effects on exhaust temperature enhancement, SCR conversion efficiency increase, while the exhaust throttling provided worse effects on BSFC. As the altitudes increased, the impacts of the intake or exhaust throttling on the SCR conversion efficiency and the BSFC became more prominent. Moreover, increasing post injection fuel quantity or retarding post injection timing made combustion worse, BSFC higher, and NOx emissions lower with benefits of exhaust gas temperature increase and SCR conversion efficiency increase. Therefore, post injection is an effective method of exhaust thermal management and should be adopted first. Then, intake throttling should be used. Finally, exhaust throttling can be considered.

Literature Review, Recycling of Lithium-Ion Batteries from Electric Vehicles, Part I: Recycling Technology

During recent years, emissions reduction has been tightened worldwide. Therefore, there is an increasing demand for electric vehicles (EVs) that can meet emission requirements. The growing number of new EVs increases the consumption of raw materials during production. Simultaneously, the number of used EVs and subsequently retired lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) that need to be disposed of is also increasing. According to the current approaches, the recycling process technology appears to be one of the most promising solutions for the End-of-Life (EOL) LIBs—recycling and reusing of waste materials would reduce raw materials production and environmental burden. According to this performed literature review, 263 publications about “Recycling of Lithium-ion Batteries from Electric Vehicles” were classified into five sections: Recycling Processes, Battery Composition, Environmental Impact, Economic Evaluation, and Recycling & Rest. The whole work reviews the current-state of publications dedicated to recycling LIBs from EVs in the techno-environmental-economic summary. This paper covers the first part of the review work; it is devoted to the recycling technology processes and points out the main study fields in recycling that were found during this work.

Experimental investigation on low-pressure pulse dust cleaning performance of plate-frame microporous membrane filter media

Mine dust removing systems mostly use wet dust collectors at present, according to the latest national emission standard, it is difficult to meet the emission requirements. Although the traditional bag filter can meet emission requirements, the water content of the particles is high in the mine, and the filter bag usually has the phenomenon of condensation, sticking to bags, and dust cleaning difficulties during use. Therefore, the experimental system was designed for low-pressure pulse dust cleaning of plate-frame microporous membrane dust collector, and the influence of different cleaning parameters on cleaning performance was studied, including the number of injection holes, injection distance, injection pressure and pulse injection time. And the optimal working conditions were selected to test the effect of the filter plate under the condition of powder attachment. The results show that the number of injection holes, injection distance and injection pressure have effects on the peak pressure, and the effect of pulse injection time on the peak pressure is implicit. The optimal conditions for the pulse cleaning operation parameters of plate-frame filter is 10 × Φ 5 injection hole, the injection distance of 20 mm, the injection pressure of 0.30 MPa, and the pulse injection time of 100 ms. On this basis, the cleaning effect of the filter plate with powder test is better, and the dust stripping rate φ was 92.9%, which is higher than 81%. The optimized plate-frame type dust collector has a better cleaning effect, indicating that the feasibility and applicability of pulse dust cleaning in plate-frame type dust collector have been improved.

Operation strategy optimization of desulfurization system based on data mining

Desulfurization systems in coal-fired power stations often suffer the problem of high operating costs caused by a rule-of-thumb control strategy, which implies great potential for optimization of the operation. Due to the complex desulfurization mechanism, frequently fluctuating unit load, and severe disturbance, it is challenging to determine the optimal operating parameters based on the traditional mechanistic models, and the operating parameters are closely related to the operational efficiency of the flue gas desulfurization system. In this paper, an operation strategy optimization method for the desulfurization process is proposed based on a data mining framework, which is able to determine online the optimal operating parameter settings from a large amount of historical data. First, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is used to reduce data redundancy by mapping the data into a new vector space. Based on the new vector space, an enhanced fuzzy C-means clustering (Enhanced-FCM) is developed to cluster the historical data into groups sharing similar characteristics. Taking sulfur dioxide emission concentration as a constraint condition, the system is optimized with economic benefits and desulfurization efficiency as the objective function. When performing optimization, the group that current operating conditions belong to is determined first, then the operating parameters of the best performance are searched within the group and provided as the optimization results. The method is validated and tested based on the data from a wet flue gas desulfurization (WFGD) system of a 1000 MWe supercritical coal-fired power plant in China. The results indicate that the proposed operation strategy can appropriately obtain operating parameter settings at different conditions, and effectively reduce the desulfurization cost under the constraint of meeting emission requirements.

Marine diesel engine control to meet emission requirements and maintain maneuverability

International shipping has been reported to account for 13% of global NOx emissions and 2.1% of global green house gas emissions. Recent restrictions of NOx emissions from marine vessels have led to the development of exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) for large two-stroke diesel engines. Meanwhile, the same engines have been downsized and derated to optimize fuel efficiency. The smaller engines reduce the possible vessel acceleration, and to counteract this, the engine controller must be improved to fully utilize the physical potential of the engine. A fuel index limiter based on air/fuel ratio was recently developed (Turbo, 2016), but as it does not account for EGR, accelerations lead to excessive exhaust smoke formation which could damage the engine when recirculated.This paper presents two methods for extending a fuel index limiter function to EGR engines. The methods are validated through simulations with a mean-value engine model and on a vessel operating at sea. Validation tests compare combinations of the two index limiter methods, using either traditional PI control for the EGR loop or the recently developed fast adaptive feedforward EGR control (Nielsen et al., 2017a). The experiments show that the extended limiters reduce exhaust smoke formation during acceleration to a minimum, and that the suggested limiter, combined with adaptive feedforward EGR control, is able to maintain full engine acceleration capability. Sea tests with engine speed steps from 35 to 50 RPM, made peak exhaust opacity increase by only 5% points when using the proposed limiter, whereas it increased 70% points without the limiter.

Concepts for Ferry Propulsion and Emissions Performance Improvement

As a result of budget pressure, ship owners are seeking ways to reduce fuel cost and meet emission requirements. This is especially true of ferry operators as a result of their continuous operation near land. This article proposes concepts in the areas of hull form, propulsors, and materials for hull and deckhouse structure that could provide the way to achieve improved performance in these areas and provide some additional important benefits.

Real-time and robust estimation of biodiesel blends

Biodiesel as a renewable alternative fuel produces lower exhaust emissions with the exception of nitrogen oxides (NOx) when compared to the conventional diesel fuel. Reducing nitrogen oxides produced from engines running on biodiesel requires proper engine controller adaptations that are linked to the specifics of the fuel blend. Therefore, online estimation of fuel blend is a critical step in allowing diesel engines to maintain performance while simultaneously meeting emission requirements when operating on biodiesel blends. Presented in this paper are three different model-based biodiesel blend estimation strategies using: (i) crankshaft torsionals, (ii) NOx emissions measurement from the exhaust stream, and (iii) oxygen content measurement of the exhaust stream using a wide-band UEGO sensor. Each approach is investigated in terms of the accuracy and robustness to sensor errors. A sensitivity analysis is conducted for each method to quantify robustness of the proposed fuel blend estimation methods.

Electric Propulsion [History

In the beginning of the 20th century, there were three candidate propulsion systems to replace the horse and buggy for personal transportation: steam, electric, and internal combustion engines. There were several reasons why the internal combustion engine won out. One was the invention of the electric starter first put in production in 1912. The driver no longer needed strength to crank the engine. Together with the Bosch ignition, major contributions made to the car business by the electrical engineers were combustion engine and electrical starters. Electric lights followed and then the radio in the 1930-the Motorola. But what really spelled the death of the electric car was the discovery of low-cost petroleum, the ability of oil refiners to crack heavy crude into gasoline, and the development of powerful, efficient engines using custom-made fuels in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Greatly contributing, of course, was the genius of manufacturers such as Henry Ford, which reduced the cost of making mass-produced automobiles so that many could afford them. The next set of vehicles was a trio of electric, hybrid, and conventional vehicles designed and built to meet the needs of urban commuters. These vehicles also demonstrated that the conventional vehicle had the lowest cost and highest performance and could meet emissions requirements, which in the 1970s was the primary driver.

Emission characteristics of diesel engine operating on rapeseed methyl ester

Biofuels are being investigated as potential substitutes for current high pollutant fuels obtained from the conventional sources. In the past, fuels were generally selected on the basis of lowest cost relating to the requirements of the engine, and no attention was given to the possible effects of their use on the environment. Recent concerns over the environment, increasing liquid fuel prices and scarcity of supply in the last decade have promoted interest in the development of alternative sources of liquid energy. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the potential of rapeseed methyl ester (RME) as a liquid fuel for diesel engines in relation to meeting emission requirements. The test results showed that RME and its blends with diesel fuel emitted high CO 2 compared to test results on diesel fuel. A very significant reduction in emissions of hydrocarbon (HC) were recorded when running on RME and the blends. HC emissions were noted to increase with increased amount of diesel fuel in the blend. The fuel economy was a little worse when running on RME due to its low energy content. There were no marked difference noted for the exhaust temperatures of the blends, RME and diesel fuel at high speed operation. However, the diesel fuel operation produced high exhaust temperatures at low engine speed. Lubricating oil analysis showed reduction in viscosity indicating oil dilution.

00/00087 Economical production of transportation fuels from coal, natural gas, and other carbonaceous feedstocks

The Nation`s economy and security will continue to be vitally linked to an efficient transportation system of air, rail, and highway vehicles that depend on a continuous supply of liquid fuels at a reasonable price and with characteristics that can help the vehicle manufacturers meet increasingly strict environmental regulations. However, an analysis of US oil production and demand shows that, between now and 2015, a significant increase in imported oil will be needed to meet transportation fuel requirements. One element of an overall Department of Energy`s (DOE) strategy to address this energy security issue while helping meet emissions requirements is to produce premium transportation fuels from non-petroleum feedstocks, such as coal, natural gas, and biomass, via Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) and other synthesis gas conversion technologies.

Impact of char and ash fines on porous ceramic filter life

As a key component in advanced coal- or biomass-based power applications, hot gas filtration systems are designed to protect the downstream heat exchanger and gas turbine components from particle fouling and erosion, cleaning the process gas to meet emission requirements. When installed in either pressurized fluidized-bed combustion (PFBC) or integrated gasification and combined cycle (IGCC) plants, lower downstream component costs are projected, in addition to improved energy efficiency, lower maintenance, and elimination of additional and expensive fuel or flue gas treatment systems. As a critical component, long-term performance, durability, and life of the porous ceramic filter elements are essential to the successful operation of the hot gas filtration system in advanced combustion and gasification applications. Char and ash fines can potentially have a deleterious impact on the life of porous ceramic filters that are currently utilized in advanced coal-fired and biomass applications. This paper reviews several of the char and ash related issues that have been encountered in various Westinghouse Advanced Particulate Filtration (APF) systems which limited filter life.

Retrofitting an existing MSW waste-to-energy facility to meet emission requirements

In this article Brian Heap (Procedair Division, Stein Atkinson Stordy Ltd) reports on the design and installation of a dry scrubbing system for a municipal solid waste (MSW) incineration plant

Future trend towards better quality export steam coals

Export steam coal amounting to about 152 million tonnes was shipped in 1989, almost double the corresponding amount in 1980. Statistics on coal quality suggest that the quality of coal currently being shipped is steadily improving, driven by buyer demand, increasing cost of shipping and environmental factors. Some of this improvement is occuring as a result of additional or improved coal cleaning but another contributor is the result of the start-up of new, large capacity mines capable of producing low ash coal from hither to untapped coal reserves. These mines exploit coal deposits with inherently low ash and sulphur content and are located in Colombia, Venezuela and Indonesia. They appear to be creating a great deal of interest from large power companies in the major importing countries by increasing potential for blending coal from numerous sources, for achieving optimum boiler performance and in meeting emission requirements. PT. Kaltim Prima Coal's, Pinang mine in East Kalimantan, Indonesia, is one of these mines and therefore provides a good case study for examining the trend towards better quality export steam coals.